About Me

Wednesday, June 08, 2016

A friend said that my advocacy for “inviolable rights of
the individual" means that one is detached from the rest of society and
hence, he/she has no responsibility for the others, especially the less
fortunate ones.

Wrong interpretation, of course. The “inviolable rights
-- and responsibilities -- of individuals" simply follows what John Stuart
Mill articulated something like "do anything you like provided you do not
harm other people." Thus, if you want to work 15, 20 hours a day, do it.
If you want to spend all your savings on travel, or fancy clothes, or parties
and drinking, do it. It is different when a person steals, or destroys other
people's property, to pursue his personal, political, religious or whatever
goals.

That is why socialism is evil because it forces and
coerces people to socialize many things they have -- their income, their
savings, investments, etc. Ok sa mga
batugan, the lazy because even if they do not work they will eat. Or for
bureaucrats, even if they produce nothing useful, just issue endless
regulations and prohibitions, they will eat and have various perks. For the
hard working and efficient people, it's lousy.

Socialism encourages free riding problem. Why aspire to
become efficient, one can be mediocre and below-average and still get paid almost
similarly as the efficient ones.

The case of Venezuela is only the most recent example.
Hugo Chavez, then Maduro, discouraged private enterprise innovation and
competition by nationalizing and socializing many important sectors and
companies.

Charity work, spending for other people voluntarily, that
is civil society and volunteerism, or voluntaryism. If you have lots of
resources and you share it willingly to the needy people, that's civil society.

In socialism, it's all coercion. That is why there is
one-party state, "dictatorship of the proletariat". Even if you know
that many of those hungry people are outright lazy, you must give your money
and savings to the state, and the state will feed the irresponsible and a thick
layer of bureaucracy.

In classical liberalism philosophy, civil society is the
"replacement" of a big state. Things that can be done by parents, by
siblings, by neighbors, classmates, officemates, church, etc. -- do NOT give
that function to the state or local governments. Like telling people that
over-smoking, over-drinking is bad, we do not need government bureaucracies to
do that.

We only need a lean state or minimal government to
perform things that cannot be done by civil society. Like dealing with armed
and organized criminals, or armed harassment in the seas, or military aggression
from other countries.

There is a belief that Scandinavian countries are
socialist. No, one can own a factory, a bank, a school, land, an airline, etc.
in Scandinavian countries. In socialism, all or most of the means of production
– factories, banks, farms, land, etc. -- cannot be privately-owned, they are
state-owned, socialized, communized. Things are socialized by force and
coercion.